Ohio has been included in lots of national rankings and scorecards lately. The latest comes from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which ranks the Buckeye State at number twenty-three (out of forty-three states) for its charter school law. At first blush, twenty-third doesn’t seem like much to laud (after all, we just lamented Ohio’s fall to twenty-third in Education Week’s “Quality Counts” ranking). But there’s more to Ohio’s modest slot than meets the eye.
For starters, Ohio improved five slots from last year. In fact, it was the third-most-improved state in terms of rankings, next to Oklahoma and Massachusetts. More important than its rise in the rankings (which could occur for a host of reasons, including other states’ charter climates getting worse) is the reason why. The report notes that Ohio’s improvement occurred because “it enacted legislation that improved its authorizer funding provisions and strengthened its charter monitoring processes.” They went further, praising other aspects of House Bill 2: “It is important to note that the legislation enacted in Ohio made a lot of other positive changes to the state’s law; it dealt with some specific challenges that have emerged in Ohio’s environment that are not covered in the National Alliance’s model law.” After a decade during which the national charter school movement often treated Ohio like the red-headed stepchild, it’s nice to hear outside groups recognize the significance of our latest reforms.
Perhaps most important, though, is understanding why Ohio lost points in certain areas and thus received a middling score. Before hastily criticizing Ohio (as some charter critics are bound to do), consider that we fared well in many of the accountability-oriented categories (e.g., performance-based charter contracts, authorizer evaluation/oversight)—though we lost significant points for having a cap on charter growth as well as inequitable operational funding and access to facilities. Ohio’s score also suffered for failing to provide charter school students with a full range of extracurricular and interscholastic activities, and for vague student recruitment, enrollment, and lottery procedures.
All of this is to say Ohio may not have earned a top ranking for its charter school law, but that has little to do with the accountability side of the equation. Ohioans who’ve grown weary of negative national attention can rest assured that this particular snapshot of Ohio and recommendations for improvement have less to do with charter accountability and quality than about creating better conditions for schools to thrive. The NAPCS model law reminds us that equitable access to funding and facilities matters a great deal for the long-term success of a state’s charter sector. It also reminds us there are many other technical aspects to charter schooling (enrollment procedures, special education costs, etc.) that deserve more attention and discussion than they often receive.
